Audio 4:24
NSW Govt accused of climate change research cutbacks

Katie HamannUpdated
Mon 21 Oct 2013, 2:08 PM AEDT

The New South Wales Government has been accused of cutting the number of climate change researchers. A former senior scientists says the cuts have been deepest in a group assigned to investigate and prepare for the impacts of climate change, including extreme fire conditions.

Transcript

ELEANOR HALL: As some question whether the extreme weather that's fuelling the Blue Mountains fires is linked to climate change, the New South Wales Government is being accused of dismantling the state's ability to investigate the issue.

A climate change scientist who was employed by the state government says the cuts have been deepest in a group assigned to investigate and prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Katie Hamann has our report.

KATIE HAMANN: When Greens MP Adam Bandt tweeted a photo of Sydney shrouded in thick smoke last week accompanied by a comment linking the reversal of the carbon tax with the possibility of more bushfires he was roundly criticised for politicising the disaster.

But scientists like Professor Andy Pittman, the Director of the Australia Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, says it's a question worth asking.

ANDY PITTMANN: We've just gone through an extraordinarily hot summer and an extraordinarily warm winter and the vegetation across our landscape didn't die back in winter or become senescent as it would normally do. It's been transpiring and evaporating water right the way through the winter, as any of your listeners who've got gardens will know.

And that means the landscape has shifted its water from within the soil into the atmosphere over those three to six months, and that means the landscape is extraordinarily dry and extraordinarily vulnerable to a few hot days.

And I think what we've seen in the last week is the signature of climate change imposed on a landscape, gradually over a six to 12 month period, leaving the landscape particularly vulnerable to fire.

KATIE HAMANN: As the bushfire crisis engulfing New South Wales intensifies, a former senior scientist with the State Government's Office of Environment and Heritage has spoken out about job losses within his team.

Dr Peter Smith is the former head of the Government's climate change science group. He's told Fairfax media that his team of ten scientists was reduced to three and that another group, focusing specifically on adaptation, also suffered deep cuts.

Professor Lesley Hughes is the co-director of the Centre for Climate Futures at Macquarie University. She is also working with the Government's climate change adaptation research hub.

LESLEY HUGHES: Climate change adaptation research is hugely important. The climate is changing, we know that. We know that climate change is already having impacts on biodiversity and human systems, even though we've only had about a degree of warming.

We're heading for at least two degrees of warming by mid-century and quite possibly more warming than that by the second half of this century. And considering the impacts we've had with much more modest levels of warming, those impacts are going to be very great indeed.

KATIE HAMANN: And is your experience is the State Government receptive to these messages about climate change and the potential impacts?

LESLEY HUGHES: I can't comment on how perceptive or otherwise the state or any other government is. All I can comment on is the fact that we have joint research projects operating now.

KATIE HAMANN: Dr Smith declined an opportunity to speak to the ABC but in his interview with Fairfax Media he expressed frustration that cutbacks in the climate change section were more significant than in others.

Dr Smith was co-author of a report published in the International Journal of Climatology which found that under current climate models, areas in south eastern Australia, including the Blue Mountains and the central coast could see a trebling in the number of days with a high risk of fires by 2050.

Pepe Clarke is the CEO of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW. He echoes Dr Smith's frustrations.

PEPE CLARKE: The current New South Wales Government has been very reluctant to speak publicly about climate change and the very real impacts that it's having on communities now and in the future.

This is disappointing. We can't afford the State Government to put its head in the sand over the very real impacts of climate change.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Pepe Clarke, the CEO of the Nature Conservation Society of New South Wales, ending that report by Katie Hamann.

And The World Today approached the office of the New South Wales Environment Minister Robyn Barker but she was not available for comment.